Many of you will be aware of the issues raised by this campaign, especially Fair Trade, but this year represents an important year in the campaign against global poverty. Several major charities, including CAFOD and Christian Aid, are calling for world leaders to take renewed action to reduce poverty in developing countries and to make 2005 the turning point in the global fight against poverty, through trade justice, dropping the debts of the poorest countries, increasing and improving aid.
Over one billion people in the world today live on less than one dollar a day, and three billion live on less than two dollars a day. Ten million children die each year before they reach their fifth birthday, largely from preventable diseases. In some developing countries life expectancy is less than 40 years, because of conflict and the HIV/AIDS crisis. In the face of these shocking statistics, how can we make a difference?
One way is to buy Fair Trade products. Fair Trade works by paying producers in developing countries a fair price for their products. Why don’t they get a fair price already? There are two main reasons why the current system of international trade doesn’t work for small producers in developing countries. Firstly, many developing countries are forced to export only low value raw products like cocoa, coffee and sugar because richer countries impose import tariffs on high value processed goods, such as refined sugar, chocolate bars and ground roasted coffee. This means that developing countries can not compete with goods processed here. Secondly, we subsidise our own farmers to produce more than we can eat, and these surpluses are often dumped onto world markets, or given as “food aid”, causing prices to collapse. Small producers in developing countries often find their livelihoods disappearing. Essentially, we are not living in a world of free trade but a world where our successive governments have established rules that protect our own interests, our own jobs and profits, our own countryside, while damaging or even destroying those of people in developing countries. What’s wrong with that, you may well ask. But we would all be better off if we removed trade barriers and unfair subsidies: the World Bank estimates that a third of the world’s poor would be lifted out of poverty through the increase in trade that would come about by removing trade barriers.
Around 5 million people in 49 countries currently benefit from Fair Trade, a drop in the ocean when we consider how many poor there are in the world. But Fair Trade products go some way towards levelling the playing field for developing country producers, enabling small producers to improve their livelihoods, send their children to school, and work together to improve local facilities such as water supplies. As important though is the message that buying Fair Trade products sends to supermarkets, large food processors and to governments: give farmers in poor countries a better deal.
The UCM will now be selling a range of Fair Trade products once a month in the Church Hall, after the UCM 10 o’clock Sunday Mass. Please drop by to look at the products that are available and to find out more about Making Poverty History.
Julie Litchfield and Fiona Stas, UCM